A broad area in this whole “not a team sport” thing that I want to talk about is this: No issue in politics is black and white. And we have to stop treating them as if they are. Neither “team” is one hundred percent correct about any one issue. They just aren’t - so stop thinking yours is.
This is true of so many hot button issues - abortion, taxes, the environment, education, international relations. But let’s start the discussion in this post with the most gray example of all the hot button issues - gun control.
Disclaimer - As usual, my own opinion falls somewhere in the middle, like the majority of Americans. But, more importantly, remember that the point of this piece isn’t to make a case for or against gun control. The point is to demonstrate that it is not black and white. It’s gray. So please, before you get angry, read the whole post so that I can piss off everyone equally.
Let’s start with you, Team Liberal - every gun owner isn’t the guy you see on MSNBC wearing an open side arm and holding a beer at a tractor pull. They aren’t all armed neighborhood watch guys waiting for an innocent black kid in a hoody who they can shoot. The vast majority of gun owners own guns for one or both of two reasons: to protect themselves and their families and/or to hunt. And, by the way, the vast majority of people who like to go hunting, do so in a legally sanctioned area for legally sanctioned prey. Most do not go to Africa and shoot endangered animals as PETA would have you believe. So don’t lump them all in with the woman who took her picture with a dead giraffe.
Most gun owners who I know agree that people on the terrorist watch list should probably not be allowed to buy a gun. Neither should people who already committed a violent crime with a gun. Most gun owners who I know don’t want to open carry in a bar while having a few drinks. And I’m sure they would appreciate you not lumping them in with the minority who do feel that way.
Now it’s your turn, Team Conservative. Every liberal does NOT want to take away your gun. And they do NOT want to keep you from buying another one. The vast majority of lefties only want guns carefully regulated - like automobiles. You can own as many cars as you want, but you have to take a safety test and be licensed to drive one. And then there are laws like speed limits to regulate your use of the car. If you’ve been arrested for drunk driving a bunch of times, you won’t be able to get a license. Is that so awful? Then why would it be so awful to do the same thing for guns which, unlike cars, are actually designed to kill? Is it so awful to be sure a person buying a gun isn’t on the terrorist watch list? Or that they haven’t already committed a horrible crime using a gun? Or maybe that they haven’t been committed to a mental institution for thinking their neighbors are aliens who need to be killed?
I know what members of Team Conservative are yelling at their screen right now - “Yeah, but the criminals won’t do any of this? The criminals won’t follow these laws. So we law abiding good guys need to be able to defend ourselves.” All that is true. So I’ll say again - NOBODY WANTS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR GUNS.
Consider a couple of scenarios for me: A man comes home and finds his wife sleeping with another man. He goes straight to his local Dickies, buys a gun and comes home and blows her head off. Then he goes and finds the guy she was sleeping with and kills him and his whole family. Then he realizes what he’s done in the heat of passionate anger and feels horrible so he kills himself.
Now consider the same scenario but with a waiting period in place. The man finds his wife sleeping with another man, goes to the gun store to buy a gun. He’s told he has to wait two days while his background is checked. He goes to a bar and gets drunk with a friend and vents about how angry he is at his wife and the other guy. He sleeps it off. By the time the two day period goes by he’s calmed down and doesn’t even want the gun anymore. He tells his wife he wants a divorce. That simple gun law just saved his own life, his wife’s life, the other guy’s life and his whole family’s life. But it took no one’s gun away and it didn’t prevent him from buying a gun if he still wanted one.
Now consider the 18 year old son of Pakistani immigrants who’s been watching ISIS videos on his computer for the past year. He and a buddy are going to shoot up a mall in the name of ISIS. He goes to buy an assault rifle and several boxes of ammo. The guy who runs the store is happy to sell it to him - a customer is a customer. But the law says he has to do a background check. Doing so flags the kid and sends an alert to the FBI. He was already on their radar because he’ been watching those ISIS videos (along with hundreds of other kids). Now they know he’s planning on actually taking action and they arrest him. All those people in the mall have just been saved.
Aren’t the lives that both of those laws saved worth the hassle of filling out paperwork and having to wait a couple days to get your new gun? Will it prevent all the gun violence in the U.S.? Of course not. Will it prevent some of it? Yes. So how many innocent lives saved are worth it for the inconvenience of a waiting period and background check?
So you see - it’s not black and white. The choice is not “Take away all the guns” or “Every citizen wear a gun on their hip like the wild west.” The answer lies somewhere in between. So stop painting each other as idiots who believe in one extreme or the other. Only a few people on the super extreme left or the super extreme right believe either of those “solutions.”
Now that I’ve pissed off people on both sides - take a breath. I readily admit I could be wrong in either direction. And I certainly haven’t even touched the surface of this complex issue (“What about assault weapons? What about bump stocks? What about schools? What about privacy issues? And on and on and on). But debating the gun issue is not my point in this entry. The point is that it’s not a simple black and white, yes or no, issue. It’s complex and gray. Even the Second Amendment is gray - it gives Americans the right to bare arms, but it also says “…in a well regulated militia.”
So Dems, stop saying every Republican is a gun toting racist who likes to shoot rare animals. And Republicans, stop saying Dems are naive snowflakes who want to take away guns from everyone but criminals. Stop. Just stop.